Bladderless curing presses and methods, and the advantages thereof over bladder-type curing presses, are well known to those skilled in the tire art. Such bladderless presses, for example, do not require the expensive bladders which are subject to wear and require replacement resulting in added downtime of the press. The bladders are also subject to failure which may go undetected resulting in poor quality or defective tires. It is also known that bladderless curing can substantially reduce cure time resulting in increased productivity. Examples of known bladderless curing presses are shown and described, for example, in Mallory et al U.S. Pat. No. 3,153,263, Brundage U.S. Pat. No. 2,959,815, Soderquist U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,812,544-546 and Frohlich et al U.S. Pat. No. 2,904,833.
Even with these many known advantages over curing methods and presses employing bladders, bladderless curing has not achieved great popularity in the industry. One of the major drawbacks of known bladderless curing presses is that effective automatic loading and unloading techniques and machinery therefor have not been developed. The reduction in curing time is often more than offset by the additional time and manual labor required for proper loading and unloading of the press. Moreover, manual placement of the green tire carcass in the mold cavity does not always insure proper centering of the same in the press which may lead to poor quality or defective tires. Another drawback of known bladderless curing presses and methods has been their inability to provide effectively and efficiently for extraction from the cured tire of internal curing media such as steam condensate or water at the end of the cure cycle.
Even in bladder type presses, the loading centering shaping and unloading of the tire presents a problem. In Turk et al U.S. Pat. No. 3,378,882, the tire is picked up by the top bead by a chuck in the top mold section and is seated on the top toe ring before the press head is translated to bring the bottom bead adjacent the bottom toe ring for bladder insertion. While such center mechanism is useful, the seating of one bead before the other can result in uneven bead curing and the large extent of press opening and movement is energy inefficient.